The wearable “Minis” in the AlertTrace system – the small devices worn on a wrist or on a lanyard or ID badge – contain only a few components: a small microprocessor “chip”, a small battery and a tiny “Bluetooth” radio along with standard electronic components (resistors, etc.). These components are all exceedingly safe.
The battery is the same “coin-cell” battery used in watches today. It generates only a tiny amount of power, and cannot in any way (other than being swallowed) harm anyone. The small microprocessor “chip” is equally harmless. Again, a modern simple watch has a small microprocessor, as does any electronic device. But the microprocessor in the AlertTrace Minis are especially small and low-low-power (hence the coin-cell watch battery to power it).
The Bluetooth radio on the Minis is the size of a match head. Some health and safety interest groups have interpreted certain reports to suggest that wireless device use may be linked to cancer and other illnesses. According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), there is currently “no scientific evidence which establishes a causal link between wireless device use and cancer or other illnesses”. But the important factor when comparing the AlertTrace system is that AlertTrace Minis have NO cellular radio component, and no GPS component. They only have the match-head size Bluetooth radio. And Bluetooth radios generate only a tiny fraction of the radio power that cell-phones generate. The FCC limit for public exposure of RF from cellular telephones is an SAR level of 1.6 watts per kilogram (1.6 W/kg) of body weight. The AlertTrace Bluetooth radio is magnitudes below this limit, generating less than one-one hundred thousandths of the RF energy of a cell-phone.